Now that you understand what travel hacking can do for you, let’s start from the beginning. What
exactly is travel hacking?
Here is a technical definition:
Or put more simply, travel hacking is a continuous process of obtaining frequent flyer miles and redeeming them for travel. Here is a visual of how it works.
Looking at this, we can determine that travel hackers have two main goals.
Goals of a travel hacker:
- 1. Earn as many frequent flyer miles as possible
- 2. Redeem those frequent flyer miles to book as much travel as possible
- 3. Find the best flight and hotel deals.
That’s it! The entire world of travel hacking revolves around the desire to accomplish these two simple goals.
Where travel hacking becomes more advanced is in actually accomplishing these goals. There are dozens of strategies ranging from simple promotions to complex financial transactions that are used to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles. We will talk about a few of these strategies as we move further into the book.
In the meantime, just remember to always refer back to this model when you don’t quite understand something. No matter how advanced a travel hacking strategy is it will always be some sort of method of earning frequent flyer miles or redeeming them for travel.
Is This Legal?
This all sounds great, but is it legal?
In one word, yes!
Travel hacking is 100% legal and is done by thousands of people all over the world. There are hundreds of blogs, online communities, and even meet-ups for people who are interested in the subject. And don’t worry, there are no secret passwords, knocks, or handshakes required. These resources are open to anyone and everyone who is interested in participating.
The main reason that travel hacking gets a bad reputation is its name. The word “hacking” is commonly associated with criminal activity related to computers or phones. For this reason, it is important to make the distinction that travels hacking is in no way related to computer hacking, phone hacking, or any other sort of criminal activity.
So why do they call it travel hacking?
The word “hacking” is commonly used to refer to anything that is “done in a clever and non-obvious way”, which is a great description for how travel hacking is done. By using clever and non-obvious ways to amass frequent flyer miles and redeem them for travel, travel hackers are able to travel the world for pennies on the dollar.
With that in mind, let’s start looking at how travel hacking works. The first step is learning what frequent flyer miles are.